Faculty

Brief Faculty Biographies

 

Paulette Arnold
BA Modern Languages and Secondary Teaching Certificate, Knox College, Waldorf Certification, Arcturus
Paulette has loved schools and the process of education for as long as she can remember. Since discovering Waldorf in 1989 she has been a homeschooling mother/teacher, a kindergarten and first grade assistant, a substitute teacher, and an adult educator. Paulette is an avid student of the history of education, and of Anthroposophy.

Elena Baba
Elena graduated from the London School of Eurythmy in 1986 and spent five years teaching and performing in Sacramento at Rudolf Steiner College, Sacramento Waldorf School, and the Iona Eurythmy Center in Fair Oaks. After her daughter was born in 1992 she became involved in young Waldorf initiatives on the West Coast and in the Mid-West teaching and performing Eurythmy as well has giving talks on the Waldorf Curriculum. She has taught Eurythmy in Waldorf Schools for 18 years and is presently teaching at the Chicago Waldorf School as well as teaching the teacher trainees in Arcturus.

Jutta Johanne Distler
Creative Speech degree from the Goetheannum’s Schule fur Sprachgestaltung und Schauspiel, Dornach, Switzerland.
Jutta, a native of Denmark, has lived in Chicago since 1989. She has been a professional musician since 1990 playing violin, mandolin, and guitar, performing in Europe, Canada, and across America. Since 2005, she has taught folkdance with her husband, Terran Doehrer, at the Chicago Waldorf School. She started teaching speech for Arcturus in the Fall of 2008.

 

David Dozier
BFA, Layton School of Art and Design, Milwaukee; M.Ed. Antioch New
David received a BFA from Layton School of Art and Design in Milwaukee. He studied painting and sculpture for many years, both privately and at the Art Student’s League of New York. He has been working in the fine arts and commercials arts since 1973 and has exhibited around the country. He has a Masters of Education from Antioch New England Graduate School and currently teaches at the Chicago Waldorf School.

Claude Driscoll
Waldorf Certification, Arcturus
Claude was born in Paris, France and came to America at 21. She had four years of experience as an early childhood assistant in the Chicago Waldorf School. She became a full time early childhood teacher for one year at the Great Oaks School in Evanston. She then joined the Chicago Waldorf school faculty as a handwork teacher while finishing her three years Waldorf teacher training via Sunbridge College. Claude was always interested in the healing aspects of the arts and has just finished a three years remedial program, again at Sunbridge College and intends to keep on educating herself in order to best serve the children that are coming to our Schools. Claude has been with the Chicago Waldorf School for 19 years now and still thinks that she has the best job in the world.

Marianne Fieber
Marianne Fieber has recently completed teaching the third grade at Four Winds Waldorf School in Warrenville, IL. She is currently the faculty chair and sits on the leadership council and board of trustees. In May of 2005, Marianne received a M.S. Ed. in Waldorf School Administration and Community Development from Sunbridge College in Spring Valley, NY. In May of 2008 she received her Waldorf Teaching Certificate from Arcturus where she has taught the drama program since 2004-05 and sections of the administration course. She has performed in numerous productions in Chicago as well as toured across the state, country and throughout Europe.

Charles Haefner
Chuck works with HRMS, Inc., a management consulting firm and is an operations manager. Attending Arcturus has made him more spiritual and has helped him to see other's perspectives and to appreciate different ways of seeing things. He has graduated from a 5 year training program with Spacial Dynamics in NY and is on the board of directors of the Foundation for Human Movement Studies. FHMS is a non profit organization committed to helping the advancement of movement activities, Spacial Dynamics, and the "All in Peace" events spear-headed by Jaimen McMillan which feature pentathlon events between 5th grade students in war torn countries to help promote peace.

Jone Hellesoy
Jone is a Waldorf graduate from the school in Bergen, Norway. She has taught Early Childhood as a Lead Teacher in the Chicago Waldorf School for 18 years. She served as College Chair at the Chicago Waldorf School. In the past three years, she founded and has operated an independent early childhood center in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.

Michael Holdrege
MS, MA, MBA. Michael Holdrege is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. He later attended Emerson College in Sussex, England and did his teacher training at the Seminar for Waldorf Pedagogy in Stuttgart, Germany. A resident of Vienna, Austria for 14 years, he initially taught biology at the Rudolf Steiner School before co-founding the Institute for Goethean Studies, where he served as a full-time faculty member. After returning to the USA, Michael helped found the high school of the Chicago Waldorf School, where he currently teaches biology and economics. Michael is also on the faculty of the Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program in Wilton, NH and a board member of the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in East Troy, Wisconsin.

Jim Kotz
Jim received a degree in Applied Math and Physics from the University of Michigan, and was later granted a graduate fellowship at Wayne State University. While in grad school, Jim wrote a thesis on the electrical and thermal properties of a particular conductive glass, which now has application in modern computer memory chips. It was also during this time that Jim was first introduced to Waldorf education through a lab associate. After completion of his PhD, he worked in the electronics industry for a number of years and later completed his Waldorf teacher training while in Southern California, where he began to teach part-time at the local Waldorf High School. Jim is now full-time with the Chicago Waldorf School and enjoys working with colleagues to strengthen an already well-integrated high school program to further meet the educational needs of 21st century adolescents, especially in regard to their relationship to science and technology. He also teaches a class in the Arcturus program.

Nancy Melvin
BA, Photography, Bennington; MA, Social Science Theory, University of Chicago; Waldorf Certification, Arcturus
Nancy's Waldorf teaching experience spans the last ten years as a class teacher, handwork teacher, music teacher and kindergarten assistant She also worked as Administrator for the Great Oaks School. She has four years of Post Graduate and MFA work at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Textile Arts and Art History and Aesthetics. She continues to cultivate natural dyes for wool, knit dolls and toys and teach the pedagogy of Waldorf handwork. Currently she is teaching handwork at the Chicago Waldorf High School and in the Arcturus Program

Jeffery Spade
Jeff has been active as a teacher in the Waldorf movement for the past nineteen years. He was the vocal music director at the Kimberton Waldorf School from 1988-1996, and director of vocal and instrumental music and drama at the Rudolf Steiner Upper School in Manhattan from 1996-2002. After leaving New York City, he spent four years as mentor, advisor, and guest teacher at the Chicago Waldorf School, the Washington Waldorf School, the Rudolf Steiner School in Manhattan, The Waldorf School of Baltimore and others. He is a frequent workshop leader for singing, music curriculum, and lifestyle diversity at AWSNA and Waldorf School conferences. In addition to his work in the Waldorf
Schools, he is a stage director for professional opera. He resides in Chicago, Illinois, where he is the Director of Music for the Chicago Waldorf School.

Elisabeth Swisher
Dpl. Music, Vienna Academy of Music, Waldorf Certification, Stuttgart, Germany
Elisabeth was born in Austria, and was fortunate to join the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany, for the last 5 years of her schooling. She graduated from the Academy of Music in Vienna in 1979, with flute and ensemble directing. She did her Waldorf teacher training in Stuttgart, and has taught in Waldorf schools and training institutions in Austria and the US since then. In 2002 she went to China to teach English at a public high school in Shanxi, and also to travel. After she returned from China she opened her own Waldorf Kindergarten in Hyde Park, Chicago. She now visits China twice a year for extended periods to help mentor and teach a dynamic and growing population of Waldorf teachers there.

Nancy Szymanski
Nancy began studying theater at Illinois State University and then made a dramatic switch to chemistry. She was a research assistant in the chemical industry for several years. From 1990 she studied watercolor painting, training under various artists in the Chicago area. Developing programs and teaching at a parent cooperative school led her to Arcturus, where she received her Waldorf teacher training. Nancy has since taken a class through grades 1 to 8 at the Chicago Waldorf School. She has mentored several grade school teachers and is the proud parent of a Chicago Waldorf School graduate.

Carol Triggiano
Carol have been a teacher at the Chicago Waldorf School for the past 18 years. She graduated from National Louis University in 1972 with a degree in education and English. Carol taught for several years in both public and private schools and for ten years was a lecturer on the art of storytellr>ing. She found Waldorf education while searching for a school for her own children. She also spent her first three years at the Chicago Waldorf School as an Early Childhood lead teacher; then she took a class from first through eighth grade and is currently entering 6th grade with her second group of children. Carol is a graduate of the Arcturus Waldorf Teacher Training Program where she currently teach courses on storytelling and language arts. She have been an outside evaluator, consultant and mentor to several Waldorf schools, including Te Ra Waldorf School in New Zealand. In her tenure at CWS Carol have served as the grade school chair, Teacher Development Committee representative, AWSNA delegate, mentor and Chair of the College of Teachers.

 

John Trevillion
John was born in England and educated in Canada and the United States. He has taught in Waldorf Schools since 1982, most of these as a “closer” (baseball expression) of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classes at the Detroit and Chicago Waldorf Schools. He is now in his 8th year of teaching at the CWS. For 4 years at CWS he supported the middle grade class teachers (mentoring teachers, and teaching blocks and math tracks), and also taught high school history. In that capacity he has devoted considerable time researching the scientific revolution of our epoch as both symptom and agent of change on the evolution of consciousness. He is currently the teacher of the 7th grade at CWS. Over the years he has also taught many workshops and teacher education courses in the middle grade sciences and math/geometry. He has also written many class plays, a number of them about major scientific figures. His most ambitious works include musicals about the life and work of Johannes Kepler, entitled The Music of the Spheres (published and still available by AWSNA Press), and Archimedes.

Frances Vig
Waldorf Certification, Emerson College, Uk. Frances was educated at Christ Church College, Canterbury, Kent, and at Emerson College, Sussex, England. She has completed her second round of eight years as a class teacher, and is a clay-modeling specialist at the Chicago Waldorf School, and high school arts teacher.

Susanne Zipperlen
Dpl. Eurythmy. Spring Valley; Waldorf Certification, Antioch; Dpl. Therapeutic Eurythmy, Peredur, England. Susanne is a native of Sweden, where she finished college, majoring in economics. After working one year in an anthroposophical home, Mikael Garden, for special children, she has lived mostly in the USA. In 1987 she began working for many years in Camphill settings in Pennsylvania, South Africa, and as a co-founder of a Camphill community in California. Susanne finished the Eurythmy Program in Spring Valley, NY, in 1994, the Pedagogical Teacher Training in Antioch in 1996, and the Therapeutic Eurythmy Training in England in 2001. She arrived in Chicago in 2002 after living in England and then Germany, where she worked at the Lubeck Waldorf School. Her teaching experiences since then were at Esperanza Community School, Great Oaks and Singing Winds Waldorf Schools. She is at present a full-time eurythmist at the Chicago Waldorf School, both teaching and doing therapeutic eurythmy with children.